Church of the Cetra
by Alan Bates
Summary: A young Cetra finds himself face to face with a mythical boogey man and learns more than he ever wanted to know.


Disclaimer: I own nothing. Leave me be.  
  
The Church of the Cetra  
  
A story by Alan Bates  
  
Tomorrow is the celebration of the Returning. The day when we honor the Great Mother above all other things. It's the grandest holiday of the entire year. My sister and I looked forward to this every year. Of course, everyone did but she always seemed more enthusiastic than anyone else. She would spend months working on her dress for the flower parade. In turn, I would always try my hardest to look professional for the ceremonies. Every year we started planning months and months in advance for the day. Funny how some things can change your mind given time.   
  
My sister, Sibilia, had always loved exploring the ruins on the outskirts of our territory. She would often leave early in the morning and spend all day inside. To her it was a world of wonder. An unexplained mystery of a primitive species and a time long gone. Trinkets she had taken from the sites lined her walls in all the places that her books and flowerpots did not. She would daydream about the fabulous lives those ancient beings before us must have lived. One day she went to explore the ruins and didn't return. When we found her, she had been killed by a wild beast. That was less than three weeks ago.   
  
The attacks escalated. Nobody ever saw the creature or creatures, but the assaults grew more and more vicious to the point where sometimes the bodies could not even be identified. Being one of the Honored Two, naturally when they decided to set up a patrol, we were both assigned to do it. I never much understood the whole idea of chosen ones. To me it just summed like I was given some badge and the same name as generations before me had been given. May the Great Mother forgive me for saying this, but it seemed like a load of bull to me.   
  
We were both given weapons for our duties. If nothing else drove the point home the weapons did. Armed guards were practically unheard of in this day and age. Either the council was tremendously overreacting or we were up against something that was seriously trouble.   
  
The first night was when I finally had the chance to meet my counterpart, the other chosen one. He didn't much impress me. He really just seemed like any other ordinary guy who, like me, had been given an honored name that had been passed down. Frankly, it was even worse sounding than my name. So much for honor.  
  
We had a predetermined patrol route set up for us. We'd each walk a certain pathway and would cross paths every other hour in front of the statue of the Great Mother. Fall was coming and the nights had just started to cool. I hadn't actually thought of this until several hours into the first night. Already I had started to get bored walking around and the chill didn't help much. I sped up my walking hoping to stay warm. It didn't much help. Nights like this, I remember my sister would always have a fresh kettle of warm soup waiting. I tried to shake the thought away. She no longer would be waiting at home for me with her soup. She was with the Great Mother now. After the next pass me and my partner made, I sprinted home and climbed through the window to grab a coat.   
  
I got back to see my partner staring into the night. For a moment I thought I had been discovered shirking my duties but when I came closer I saw something completely different. He kept staring into the darkness afraid to move. The grip he had on his weapon was so tight it seemed like his knuckles were going to burst.   
  
"Did you see that?" he asked me quietly. "Did you?" his eyes never left the shadows.   
  
"No. I didn't see a thing." We both waited there for a moment neither of us really sure if anything had been there or not. I wanted to dismiss it but I couldn't. The look on his face was of pure and total fear. I said some things to comfort him and several minutes later we parted to continue our rounds. I keep my eyes open and ears perked to catch even the slightest trail of what could have been out there.  
  
Apparently I had ended up walking much faster because hours later, I found myself at the statue before our time. Rather than going on, I stopped and waited.   
  
I had seen the statue many times before but never in these conditions. In the silent darkness, the cold statue seemed comforting in ways that I never though possible. She seemed so gentle and lovely, even the statue of her. There was a strength in her. It was a look both naïve and wise. All Cetrakind owed her our lives. I hadn't even wanted to leave my partner came strolling up.  
  
"Looking for something?" he asked me. "Is the Great Mother's statue that interesting or are you just awed in it's presence?" the snide remarks came.  
  
"Hey. At least I wasn't huddled in the dark crying that the Human was out to get me." I joked back at him. He smiled and said nothing more.  
  
"Don't start with me tonight." He finally said in a tone that was half fear and half anger.   
  
"Kidding! Kidding! Lighten up, I'm still a bit on edge here, too and I didn't even see what you saw." the took a moment to look around. "well get moving again."  
  
The next few nights passed in similar fashion with one slight exception. Neither of us could ever shake the feeling that we were being watched. There was a presence, neither of us saw or heard it but we both could have sworn it was right around the corner at all times. The shadows themselves seemed to be stalking us.   
  
Each morning, we would find that nothing we did during the night had been of any use. The body count continued to rise. It was pointless us being out here. I grew complacent and distracted. I spent more time alone with the statue of the Great Mother. She alone gave us our protection, but as the nights pasted, I began to wonder exactly how much protection she was giving.   
  
"How could you have left us at the mercy of such a creature? Why aren't you protecting us? How could you let such things happen, Mother?" I asked the statue out loud one night not expecting an answer. As I waited, I don't know for what, it wasn't my partner I was waiting for. I guess I was just mad and depressed and needed to shout. I needed comfort.   
  
It was then that I think I truly saw the Statue of the Great Mother. I had always thought her face to have been carved to look peaceful and wise but now I saw it differently. She was sad. Even though the stone artifice, I could tell that something she had seen had caused her great pain. At her feet lay the emblems of the Chosen Two. The one that had protected her and the one who had set her free. For the first time I wondered about why those had been chosen as the symbols.   
  
Each was a sword of unusual design. One far to wide for practical use the other to long. I wore the wide sword emblem. I was the protector. Some protector, I couldn't even save my own sister.  
  
"Why, Mother? Why did you leave us here like this?" I asked her again gazing into the stone eyes of her likeness.  
  
A cold masculine voice on the wind answered me. "It was a mistake." A turned quickly and saw nothing but and escaping shadow.   
  
The night before the Celebration, I was determined to track the source of the voice and to end the killing. No more needed to die like my sister. I had explained about my encounter to the other Chosen making him promise that he wouldn't tell anyone. We would still meet by the statue but I would ignore the routes of my post.  
  
Nothing. Nothing happened at all for the first several hours of the night. I went back to our meeting place. At the very least, I could take comfort by Her statue.   
  
I waited two hours for my partner to arrive. He never did. I asked HER to protect me and I went to search for him. It wasn't long at all before I found him. Most of him. He had been mauled. Panicking, I ran back the way I came and stopped dead.  
  
The killer was standing there. He looked at me coldly and I felt like fainting, or screaming, or something. During childhood, I like all the other children had heard the story of the Human. The one that the Great mother could not purge from the land. It was a common story used to scare children. As I grew older, like everybody else, I relized it was just a story. There was no Human out there stalking through the nights. No scourge on the Planet that the Great Mother had failed to wipe away. I thought that. But now he stood before me.  
  
He was even worse than I had ever imagined. The ragged remains of a cloak tugged at his neck between a massive set of bat like wings. His body was misshapen and strangely colored. Dead gray skin was sutured to a wild animalistic purple flesh tones. One was covered in a rusty metal claw that reached to his elbow. Various tolls were clipped to his belt, mostly indescribable. One seemed to be a sort of mechanical saw. Red eyes gazed from the eyeholes of a plain white face mask.  
  
He turned away from me and began again to gaze at the statue of the Great Mother. "Get away from that, beast." I called out to him with as much authority as I could muster. I have to admit, it wasn't much.  
  
"I apologize. I mean you no harm. Who was he?" he demanded of me. "the man I killed, who was he?"  
  
"Why would a beast like you care? I trembled with both rage and fear. "You stalk us and kill us like game. Why does one man's name matter? The Great Mother should have purged you from the land when she killed the others!" the tales of my youth flooded back to me. Tales of how the Great Mother called forth the Lifestream to rid the land of the humans. The story of the human who was too dark to be taken away.  
  
"The Great Mother…" he seemed to sigh with his unearthly voice. Then he did something I never expected. He looked up at the statue. Right in her eyes and spoke her true name. There was no hint of disrespect in his tone.   
  
"How…How do you know that name? Only the Chosen and the greatest of the wise Sages are allowed to say her name!"   
  
"I know her name because I knew her. She was my friend." He said to me. All threat seemed to disappear from his posture, despite his demonic form. "Now I've answered your question, tell me the answers to mine. Who are you and why do you hate me?"  
  
"You've slaughtered the residence of this village like livestock. You killed my sister and my partner." I said with a calm that surprised even me.  
  
"and you are?" the Human asked again.  
  
"I am one of the Chosen, Clowd. Named after the Protector of the Great Mother. My partner was named after the liberator, he was Seferos." As I introduced myself, he laughed. He seemed to catch the irritation in my expression and tried to stop laughing. "Shut up!" I shouted at the beast. "I didn't chose this name! I didn't want it! What kind of stupid name is this anyways!?!"  
  
The creature raised his hand to his mask, much in the same manner that a person will put there hand on their chin when they thought. For a moment I was afraid that he might remove the mask and reveal al the unspeakable horrors that lay beneath. As I said, the fears of my childhood were all too real now. "Sit." he said. " Allow me to tell you a tale."  
  
I did as He said. I didn't believe that the Great Mother would have ever associated with the Human. It seemed almost blasphemy to speak.. "How did you know here? I thought she cleaned the world of the Humans."  
  
He came and sat beside me. "She did. But that's not the entire story, young Cetra. First tell me what You know. The basics. Don't bother me with all the details. There's not much time anymore and I want to know what you say."  
  
I tried to hide the tremor in my voice, tone between anger at his impertinence and horror at what he was. Somehow I found the strength to speak. I began to tell him the Praise.  
  
"Once the world was a foul place, where Humans roamed spreading their filth and tapping away at the life energy of the Planet. During this time, the last of the great fiends arose, Jehn-ova, the ancestral enemy to our great Mother…."  
  
"I didn't ask for fairy tales," the creature interrupted.   
  
I continued, skipping slightly ahead. "with the power granted to her by her birthright and the two champions, which I am named for, she was able to summon the Lifestream forth, returning our people to the world and banishing the Humans to the nether realms as they deserved. She then led her people to restore the order of the Cetra from the ruins the Humans had left behind."  
  
"How do you feel about them. The Humans" the creature tested me. If he meant to kill me, he would no matter what I said. There was no doubt that he wanted anything but my blood.  
  
"They were fiends. Beats that roamed the land, destroying it as they went. That's why the Great mother had to cleans them from the land."  
  
"I was human." the beast told me. He was silent then as if waiting for my response. Then he spoke again. "Did you ever wonder who those champions you're named after were? I prefer not to get into your late companions name but you. Cloud. actually…perhaps it's best that I don't go into this." he turned to walk away. Quickly I jumped to my feet. I thought of drawing my weapon at him but didn't. I don't think I would have been able to hurt him anyway.  
  
"Tell me. Tell me everything. I want to know. I Need to know. Why? Who was Cloud? Who was Seferos? Why did the Great Mother leave us behind? Where did she go? I need to know. I need to know more than the teachings!" my voice died down almost into a whimper. "I need to know why Sibilia died. I need to know more than the elder teach."  
  
"The teachings were worthless. You know nothing," it said harshly without turning to face me.  
  
"Then tell me the truth, Human! If you know anything at all, you'll tell me. The Great Mother wiped the world clean for the Cetra, but then she left us. Why?" he turned to face me as I said it. A clawed metal hand reached up for his mask.   
  
"The truth will not set you free. I knew a man once who spent his whole life in pursuit of unknown truths. He destroyed all those around him. Himself included…..myself included," the creatures statement seemed far away. Somehow I knew he wasn't directing it at me. He plucked the mask from his face. For a split second, I was frozen. The boogeyman I had grown up fearing was standing before me, and I was about to see his true face. I braced myself.  
  
The face wasn't hideous. That's about the only compliment I could give. It seemed a mismatched combination nature never intended. It vaguely resembled the face of a thin, high cheeked Cetra mixed with a wild Galian. But that's not all. There was some twists, like those of some form of demon, a hint of malevolence. And stitches that seemed grown rather than applied crisscrossed his features.   
  
"You can speak, you know." it told me. He face almost seemed to be smiling.  
  
"I don't know what to say." I stammered.   
  
"Nothing? Go ahead. You won't get this chance again." it said.  
  
I had so many question to ask, about the Great Mother. About my forebearer, someone named Cloud. About Seferos. But what escaped my lips where something totally different.  
  
"Why do you look so much like a normal Cetra?"  
  
"Cetra never really seemed different from us humans." he seemed to stop to think for a moment. "Other than the smaller stature, you couldn't tell the difference between a Cetra and a human. You're Great Mother, my friend Aeris, she was half human herself."  
  
"You're lying. The great Mother…she.." I stammered. I really don't know how I was supposed to object. But I wasn't right. I knew that much. No way could the Great Mother have had anything to do with the Humans. She destroyed them. She couldn't have been part human.   
  
The creature reached into one of the pockets of the black rags he wore. "I have a photo I want you to see." he told me. I had no clue what a photo was until he produced it. It was a picture from true life. Not a painting, if it was one, the artists must have been of remarkable talent. It was faded and torn some places with slight rips and stains on it. It look like it belonged in a museum.  
  
Then I saw what was in the picture and I thought that a church would have been more likely place to find it, for it contained a view of the Great Mother as she must have been in life. It seemed that at the very moment it was taken, she had leaned in to kiss a spikey haired blonde standing next to her. The surprise on his face was proof that it hadn't been expected. Standing with them were an older man with some form of burning stick in his mouth, two scandalously clad women, one with short brown hair the other with long black hair. In the back of the group two large me stood. One had skin that was brown like tree bark, the other seemed to be a gaunt man dressed in the manner of the creature before me. As if all that wasn't odd enough, a nanaki beast with one eye stood with them.   
  
There was nothing I could say to the revelation. I stood there silently as the beast held the picture for me to see. I didn't dare touch it myself.  
  
"Are you ready to hear a story?" The creature asked with a hint of mirth.  
  
Then he told me. Everything. He told me things that would have declared me an outcast and a blasphemer should I ever repeat them. Many time I would have to stop him to have him explain thing that must have been second nature to him, but things I had never heard about. Things with odd names like, electricity, airships, guns. He told me of the Great Mother, Aeris, he always called her Aeris without any hint of reverence at all but rather of the respect one would give an equal. He told me how she had met and fell in love with the man who's name I bore. How she was slain by Seferos, who had been driven mad by the alien Jenova. He told me of his own experiences of the beasts that had been bonded to him, preventing him from dying. The he reached a part of the story that seemed to shake him to his core.  
  
The Great Mother had sacrificed herself knowing that she could save the planet by summoning the Great Holy. That part I had know. His voice sounded bitter and sad at the same time. I almost expected him to cry to hit something. Hundreds of years later, the memory of it still seemed to tear at him.  
  
The Great Holy restored the Cetra to their rightful place on the Planet, destroying the Humans as it swept across the land. As the gospels spoke, she in a sense gave birth to the new race of the Cetra.   
  
What they never told us, what the Human was now telling me was her motivations. She had never meant to do what she did. She only wanted to save her friends and her love. Humans. She didn't know Holy would wipe the Planet clean or restore the Cetra to life. It was a horrible, horrible mistake. The Human drilled that thought into me. She knew she was going to die. She had excepted that she was going to be killed and return. But she would have no family and friends to return to.  
  
The creature, stopped telling his tale. Pain seemed to creep through his features. His eyes flashed with red light for a moment, then he clenched his teeth harshly and threw back his howling in pain. I didn't know whether to run or not, so I sat still as the dead.  
  
"Not much time." He gasped "less time everyday."  
  
"What? What do you mean …"  
  
"Where you paying attention? I said that Holy destroyed the humans. What do you think I was? And your Great Mother? Half human," his voice seemed more guttural than normal. "and I human….mostly human."  
  
"then…," I had to break the silence. If the Great Mother was part human (it HAD to have been true, but it seemed so blasphemous) and he was partially human…(Partially? Until tonight, I had know him as THE Human. We all did, we just didn't expect him to be real.) But if they were both … Humans and … "the human all died." I said quietly.  
  
He smiled. It looked like a beast gone rabid and utterly evil. "She grew sick at first. The new race honored her and whished to make her their ruler but she would have nothing of it. She never got over what she saw as the ultimate act of betray towards her friends. While her body wasted away, her mind grew worse."  
  
"And you?" I asked.  
  
"I was changing. It happened to me at times, but the changes weren't reversing correctly anymore. They would get worse every night. I didn't change back anymore. Rather, my features seemed to meld. The voice that spoke to me grew louder and more in control but I had just lost almost everyone I had ever known. You could understand that my own well being wasn't my largest concern at the moment. Didn't you say your own kin had died?"  
  
"Yes. My sister. After our parents died, we were the world to each other."   
  
"Then you understand to a degree. But in fact my entire world died. Except for your Great Mother. We watched her pass away before us. Each day she would get worse. Taking a life is a hard thing to do. She had just committed genocide on a world wide scale with the intent of helping. She killed everyone she had ever met because she made a mistake. She tapped into energies she didn't understand. Often we would sit there. We couldn't comfort her. We could do little more than watch and listen as she begged for forgiveness from people that were no longer there."  
  
"We?"   
  
"I had a companion. Neither human nor Cetra nor… I don't remember now. It was so very long ago. I can't remember. So many things I can't remember. I had a friend who was a pilot. I don't know what his name is. I don't remember what a pilot is. There was a woman in a white coat. She wore glasses and kept her hair in a pony tail. I don't remember why she was important to me only that she was. There so much I can't remember. More everyday. More…less. There's less of me everyday. It's taken longer but so much of my mind is gone now. That's why I came back while I could still remember. I wanted to say goodbye."  
  
He had lost me by this point. I couldn't help wonder how much of his mind is gone. There was so much about this man that I didn't understand. So much I wanted to know.   
  
"You've been doing the killings. You killed my partner. You've been hunting the town folk."   
  
"Things that have kept me alive. They're inside me. There's less of me everyday. Their influence is taking over more and more. Ungodly things inside me. It was a mistake. The man in the coat made a mistake."  
  
I could hear his voice starting to fade. The intelligent creature I had engaged in conversation was fading away, perhaps for good. There was still so much he hadn't told me. Things I wanted … no … Needed to know.  
  
"the Grea…," I caught myself. "Aeris." The name felt strange on my lips, kind, like the kiss of an old lover. "How did Aeris die?"  
  
He pointed to a device attached to his belt. It was shaped sort of like an L with a padded area I thought to be some form of handle. Near the handle there was some form of switch.  
  
"She shot herself one night. With this. She took it from me as I slept. As I slept. And shot her self. While we slept. I and the red thing. We found her morning. In the. Found her. Brains… her brains were… she shot brains out."  
  
It was hard to listen to him now. He had known things that no Cetra alive knew and now they were gone. His speech sounded like a animal trained to speak like a Cetra. The language was rough, harsh.   
  
"Came here to say bye. To die. Goodbye Aeris. I miss you now. Need help now Cloud." he said to me. "you always our leader. Friend. Need help now. Fingers can't work it. Same gun. Exact same. Un…belt it."   
  
I understood. I unfastened the device from the belt and held it by the metal end. There was a hole at one end. It was remarkably heavy for such a small device.  
  
"Point metal top head. Hold my cloth wrapping." I did as he instructed. "red dot. Safetly. Push." I pushed the button as he said to do. It gave a resounding click. "Point to head now. Point." he turned away from me for a brief moment towards statue. "sorry flower girl. I sorry. I go now." he turned to me again. "you kill me now. Help…die. Me die. Push…Pull …trigger"  
  
I held the device towards him and he knelt down, placing his forehead against the end that had the hole in it. There was one thing missing. I recited a modification of the Sending Prayer, that which we gave our most honored as they are lowered into the lake.   
  
"You who were friend of Aeris, protector of the Great Mother of the Cetra," I didn't know what else to call him. He looked puzzled as he listen to me speak. Much of the intelligence was gone from his eyes. "You have lived a long life, longer perhaps than anyone should be they Cetra or Human. I grant you release. May you know the eternal pleasure of the Promised Land."  
  
He seemed to smile. "No believe. Don't believe in … afterlife. I … have …already lived enough."  
  
I pulled what he had called the trigger. There was a loud echoing sound like that of thunder and the back of his head exploded.  
  
"…And then there were none," I said outloud. I don't know why.  
  
I dragged his body down to the burial lake and watched as he sank beneath the ripples. The boogey man was dead and in the end he wasn't a bad man at all.  
  
I told the elder nothing of the truth. Instead I blamed the killings on a wild nanaki beast and told them I had killed it and buried it in the forest. The accepted this. The truth really didn't mean that much to me anymore. It was better they not know. Our society, Our way of life, Our religion, it was all a mistake, a bad joke at best. I alone knew.  
  
When the sun rises tomorrow, the festival will begin. They'll all gather to celebrate a kind loving woman who would have sacrificed it all for her friends. They'll continue to worship her if my sister were still here, she would be among them. Praises will be sung for the Great Mother, but for all the wrong reasons.   
  
The last Human gave me many truths. He gave me something else too. He called it a gun. I had used it to end his suffering. It feels cold against my skin. I throw a coin into the air. Heads, I pull the trigger. Tails, I try to live with what I've learned.  
  
Author's Note: One of the more popular theories about the end of Final Fantasy VII was that the ending showed the destruction of the human race and the return of the Cetra to the Planet. While you don't hear it as much as you used to and the upcoming sequel completely closes the door on this idea, I thought it to be quite interesting and worth exploring. 


End file.
